Mission Album 1915

May Whitcomb's children wave from their veranda.
They sling their bicycles against the jhula.
At the door, their saried ayah.

A bullock-wallah waits with a bullock cart.
Dressed as pukka sahib, grandfather
in the shadow of a banyan.

Along stucco walls in Ahmednagar,
shirtwaisted women pose new babies—
New Englanders born on the Deccan.

Men cradle guns.
Around umbrellas, bending coolies,
tiffins of church-picnic luncheon.

Beside the stream, mudpies;
near tamarinds, their bungalow.

New soldiers march beyond the gates.
The mission quells the Empire's famines.

(They feel, even then, the shifting:
Gandhi-ji has come from Africa
"and is, it seems, determined to start something,"

writes Great-Grandfather Alden,
noting our World may not be as it's been.)

May still makes the holiday arrangements.
The day of Fancy Dress, her cook prepares
stuffed chicken for American Thanksgiving.

Small Mary reads her books on Autumn,
and poses as "fallen leaf," while William
is "Red Indian Savage," feather in his cap.

"And really," May writes, "is a perfect heathen."
They receive hard cranberries
from a parish off Cape Cod.

Summon once again their pilgrim God.
Pray for succor in their wilderness.